Highly recommended reading.....

[Trainman203]

....... if you like steam engines.

Steam's Lost Empire by kalmbach publications.  A collection of articles from Trains Magazine back  in  the 1940's and 50's.  Largely first hand accounts from the cab by old steam heads long dead.  Reading these stories was a gut punch realization I'd always known, that I was born 50 years too late and should have been one of those guys.  Diesel fans should read it too, to understand these proud men born in the 19th century, whose commitment to their calling, for that is what it was, and their genuine love of their machines, is unmatched and incomprehensible today  .